


I Am Done With My Graceless Heart

by ZaliaChimera



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bisexual Male Character, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Typical Horror, Choices, Clubbing, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Ink, Nightmares, Poor Life Choices, Season/Series 03, Transformation, mannequins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 19:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19069018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. Our world is made of choices and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.Tim has a detailed contact list full of the secrets people have told him, and a lot of time to kill.He also has a choice to make, and he is so tired of being a pawn.





	I Am Done With My Graceless Heart

Tim contemplates exactly how much awful attention he’ll get if he starts making paper aeroplanes out of the statements that he’s supposed to be looking into. 

He wonders how much he cares. 

Turns out the answer is ‘not fucking much’, and he grabs the nearest statement and starts to fold the paper, smoothing down creases with his thumb nail. Maybe he’ll run a contest, see how far he get it down the main hallway. Just for himself of course, because Basira is reading, and Melanie is doing fuck knows what, and Martin-

Ugh, he doesn’t want to think about Martin, because that leads to thinking about Jon, leads to thinking about The Archivist, and that’s the last thing that he wants right now. Or ever. If he could never think about any of this again, it would still be too soon.

One of the worm scars is itching. Tim scratches at it idly and resists the urge to drag his shirt up and examine it. He’s done that a thousand times and it always ends the same way; paranoia as he searches every inch of his body for evidence of wriggling squirming masses burrowing into him, examining every thought in case he can somehow figure out if one of them isn’t his own. 

He does that anyway, spend ages examining stray thoughts to decide if this one is Tim Stoker, or is it something that’s drifted in from the Archives or from _Elias_ to slowly wear down his resistance until he’s just as monstrous as the thing that used to be Jon.

That probably isn’t fair. Jon has acted more human in the weeks he’s been back, than he had in the couple of years in the Archives before everything went to hell.

Tim doesn’t care if it’s fair. Jon is a monster, they’re all trapped working for a sadistic murderer who serves a monster even Lovecraft couldn’t conceive of, and the apocalypse is coming. One more day in the rapid downward spiral that is the life of Timothy Stoker.

There’s a commotion from the stairs, wordless noise which resolves into speech. Tim keeps the current paper plane in his hand and listens as the words become clearer. 

“You can’t go out like- Jon, you’re bleeding and you- have you even slept?”

“I’m fine, Martin.”

Ugh. Of course it would be. Couldn’t be Melanie who is at least good for a laugh and sharing mutual hatred of their boss and the Archives as a whole. No, has to be the monster and his number one fan.

He throws the paper plane down the hall just as they reach the bottom of the stairs. It narrowly misses Jon’s head, and the monster stares back at him with wide eyes. 

There are scratches on his face, bleeding sluggishly, but it’s the eyes that do it. They look human. Still Jon’s grey eyes, the ones that Tim had called pretty when he’d first started because Jon got so flustered when he did.

It would be so much easier if they were _wrong_ , if they were some weird colour or slit pupilled, or like something from a thousand horror movies. But they’re not and it feels like one more lie.

“Tim…”

Tim stands up and grabs his coat from the back of his chair. “I’m leaving.”

It’s Martin who takes offence. “Tim! It’s three in the afternoon. You can’t-“

“Watch me.” He pulls on his jacket and shoves his chair back under the desk with exactly the amount of force necessary.

Martin looks like he’s about to say something, but Tim sees Jon touch his shoulder and shake his head and it makes his teeth ache. He swings his rucksack onto his shoulder and brushes past them and up the stairs to the reception.

The reception is brightly lit, all chrome and glass and modelled after the British Library. It’s like a modern business, not a temple to a monstrosity. It’s a short few steps to the door and then-

“Ah, Tim. Going somewhere?”

Fuck his luck. Fuck his life. And fuck Elias Bouchard.

Tim stops in his tracks and turns to face Elias, a sickly smile on his lips. Elias looks unruffled as ever in a pristine grey suit. Tim should have been more suspicious when he turned up for his interview for the research job and realised that the Head of the Institute wore bespoke suits. The only people in the business of the paranormal who wore suits like that were either rich weirdos who’d inherited, or actual demons, and Tim is unlucky enough that his boss is the latter.

“I thought I’d go out for lunch. Hadn’t realised that had been outlawed. Or maybe you just don’t think we need to eat.”

Elias raises an eyebrow, and there is that maddening smile on his lips, the one that says that he knows exactly what Tim is thinking and planning, and finds it amusing. 

“Certainly not,” he says. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? I know Jon just got back so I expect work may be a little… difficult for the rest of the day.”

Tim barely holds back a snort. Difficult. Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. Martin will be fussing over Jon like a lovesick idiot, and Jon’s guard dog will be back snarling at anyone and probably plotting to murder them all. Who the hell knows where Melanie and Basira have gone off to? Far away if they had any sense and any choice.

Oh wait, none of them have a choice. Silly him.

He looks back at Elias, trying to figure out what trap this is. It’s a trap no matter what he does, and he’s not sure there’s a least bad option, so it’s just a matter of figuring out what his poison is today. Elias seems content to wait for him to figure that out. 

“Sure,” he says finally. “I’m sure Martin can handle anything that comes up.”

Elias’ smile widens but is still somehow pleasant. “Of course. Enjoy the rest of your day. I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Of course,” Tim replies, voice flat. It’s not agreement, just a statement of fact.

He turns towards the door and feels Elias’ gaze on him even after he leaves the building.

Of course, now he’s out, he has no idea what to do. He misses the days when an early finish would be because of a date or an event. Publishing had good parties. It was all part of the job — schhmoozing, making contacts, trying to find out which agent had signed someone who might be big. Picking up all of those little bits of information that would help the job along.

And now there’s just the Archives. That’s the rest of his (probably short) life stretching out ahead of him.

He’s halfway to Pimlico station when his phone rings. He pulls it out and stares at the number for a long moment before he answers it.

“Hey mum. What’s up?”

He moves to the edge of the pavement, wedging himself against the side of a pillar so he won’t get bumped into by tourists.

“No, no I don’t think I’ll make it. Work you know? No I haven’t been looking at getting back into publishing but-“ He stifles a sigh as she tells him about this great job she’d seen advertised in the Guardian. Right up his alley, she says.

It takes seven years to declare someone dead in absentia. Tim knows. They’d been through all the motions; interview after interview with the police, all of them recounting their last sightings of Danny. Had anything seemed off? No officer (Yes). Had he been acting strangely? Not that I remember (Yes). Do you have any idea where he might have visited? Not a clue (Yes).

And through every question, Tim had sat there, lying through his teeth and wanting to scream that Danny was dead, worse than dead, and there are monsters in the world and why can’t you see that?

There is a gravestone up near where his parents live, and they go visit every Sunday. But the grave is empty and Danny is gone, and whatever is left of him is being used to try to end the world.

“Alright mum, I’ll take a look okay?” 

It seems to placate her. There’d been a few arguments when she’d found out he’d quit his job and taken one t the Magnus Institute. Crackpots, you know? she’d told him. He wishes she’d been right. That it was just his career he was throwing away, not his freedom and sanity and soul.

“Yeah, I love you too. I’ll try to get down to see you soon. Talk to you later.”

He hangs up and clutches the phone in his hands, just trying to breathe through the wave of grief and guilt and exhaustion that runs through him. It’s that time of year, around when Danny had been officially declared a missing person. It’s a stupid phrase when he knows that Danny is dead, dead, dead and he can’t even tell them. Has to hear his mum talk about how they can’t move house in case he needs to come home, or some hint of a possible sighting somewhere in Norfolk.

They still have hope and Tim knows exactly how useless that is.

He doesn’t want to go back to his flat. He knows what will happen if he does; he’ll be drunk on cheap vodka by six and spend it watching shitty horror movies on Netflix as if that will somehow help to numb the very real horror that is his life. No, some remaining sense of self preservation tells him that this is a very bad path to walk. He needs people. Light, and music and movement. At least then there’ll be a reasonable facade if he does get drunk. Getting drunk at a club or a party is much more socially acceptable than drinking alone.

He opens up his contacts list and scrolls through until he finds the one he wants. It’s a very detailed contact list; everyone with a photo and a name, and a nickname, and a description of how he knows them, and notes on who they work for and who he definitely doesn’t want to mention around them. It had helped in publishing. Always useful to know which editors to speak to about what, which journalists to send a new release to. When he’d joined the Magnus Institute, the same system had proven equally useful for research purposes. 

He picks one contact and jabs his finger at the call button, waits for it to ring. “Hey, Jessica? Yes! It’s Tim. Tim Stoker.”

He falls back into it, into the laughter and the gossip and the gentle flirting. It feels good.

“Yeah, I’m freelancing right now,” he lies. “Took a break for a while but I’m getting back in. I was wondering if you know anything going on in the next couple of days? Parties. Y’know, the good ones.”

It is remarkably easy to get the information. Say the right words, the right phrases that mark you as part of the right crowd, and people open right up. 

One phone call and he has the details of a publishing party for that night and enough time to make himself presentable and do his research before he shows up. 

—————

The party is out near the British Museum, in one of those hotels that packages chain brand luxury. Tim tugs at his tie, and adjusts the cuffs of the suit he hasn’t worn in a few years, and makes sure that his smile is charming and just the right shade of self-depreciating. 

They let him in without a second glance.

He slides through the room, picks up a glass of wine some the drinks table, and finds a spot where he can watch for a few minutes, take in the rhythm of the room. It had been second nature at one point, and he’s a bit rusty these days; the Institute doesn’t do office parties. They’d probably be miserable if it did.

He feels it coming back to him though. Spots a few agents and editors that he’d known in what feels like a different life. Picks out the new blood, the ones who hang around the edges, who laugh a bit too forcefully, and who gulp their wine because it gives them something to do.

It takes approximately half a glass of wine before Tim is drawn into conversation. It’s like he’d never left. He slides right back into it like it’s four years ago, before Danny, before the Magnus Institute, before he knew the sort of monsters that really existed in the world. He says the right words, smiles the right way, and he unlocks the people around him.

And they talk.

It’s easy. It’s fun. If he really had been planning to get back into publishing (if he had a choice in the matter), he would have learned enough in an hour to get him set up. People are so willing to tell him things.

He likes it.

Just because it’s fun. Because it is _normal_. Not because the collection of knowledge (Chris the sub-editor has been hitting the cocaine hard) settles something inside him, feeds some hunger. Just because he likes learning things. He’s always liked learning things and learning people and it’s not a bad thing.

The drinks keep coming, enough to get him slightly tipsy and he’s pretty sure he’s _in_ with that agent later tonight if he wants (the one who just broke up with his boyfriend and thinks a rebound fling would really show him), and with that editor who’s been giving him eyes, laughing a little too loud at even his mediocre jokes (she’s drowning under the weight of her new position).

“And then he said-“

Halfway through a rambling description of a raunchy night out with a couple of guys from marketing whose names he doesn’t remember (Andy Lester, 38, depressed and angry and borderline alcoholic, and Paul Dever, 25, fresh faced and excited and willing to do _anything_ for his dream career), and the thought hits him, sour and grating between the beats of laughter and the sip of his drink:

I could Know you. 

It hits him with the staggering force of a sledgehammer wrapped in silk. 

I could Know you. 

He gulps the rest of his drink, and smiles blithely and shrugs helplessly as he sidles out of the conversation to grab another one. Stands there and downs the next glass and ignores the way that his fingers shake around the stem.

I could Know you.

Tim shakes it off, that shivery feeling, that sudden surge of hunger and desire. It’s nothing. It’s not real. Fuck, the Institute really is getting to him, getting in his head. He needs to distract himself. 

The solution comes with a gaggle of people heading out to escape the awkward winding down of the party. He tags along, inserts himself between a pretty copyeditor just starting to get jaded, and a girl who just got a job as an editorial assistant and who is practically buzzing with excitement. 

They’re heading to a club, they tell him, open smiles and voices and it’s a little dizzying honestly. He’s had too much to drink and the voices of the crowd seem to press in on him ringing with truth and information.  
Definitely too much to drink.

Is that going to stop him? Absolutely not.

They exit the hotel into the night air which is warm and settles thickly against his skin. They could take the tube, but this time of night, it would take longer to get to the station and wait for a train than it does to walk. He keeps up the chatter, the pleasing niceties which draw people out of their shells and make them so willing to tell him what he wants to know. It isn’t _weird_ , he promises himself. He’s always been like this. He’s not _cruel_ with it. He’s just good at talking to people.

By the time they reach the club, his contacts list is several entries longer and scrolling through it seems to take forever.

The club is one of those places that caters to professionals; trendy in a conservative sort of way. Clean and plush and anonymous enough to be any of the hundred other clubs of the exact same types on central London. Not memorable, and it’ll never be a hot spot, but also you won’t get busted for taking less legal substances by your boss.

There’s flashing lights and an overpriced bar and music loud enough to drown out the sound of his own thoughts, the heavy bass throbbing through his chest like it’s been hollowed out.

Maybe it has. He knows he lost something the night he saw the thing that had once been Danny.

He doesn’t object when a cute man with dark hair that reaches his shoulders, calls for shots and presses one into Tim’s hands. Tim downs it, matching the man’s grin with one of his own. He lets himself be pulled onto the dance floor, sweat sticking his shirt to his skin, and the hum of static in his head.

It’s easy to lose himself in the music, in the dance, the press of warm bodies and lights that pulse through his eyes even when they’re closed. It turns everything into white noise, blunts sharp edges of knowing and the need to talk, to learn, to fill his contacts list with fragments of the people on it.

He’s being kissed, being touched, hands splayed across his body, the low hum filling him from toes to head and he could stay here, he thinks, stay here and dance and dance and dance and die.

Lips press against his again, drawing him away into a shadowed corner near the door. Tim kisses back, hungry and eager. Hands slide up beneath his shirt and he feels a leg press between his. His arms slide around the slim figure, feeling the planes of their back, and he doesn’t actually know who he’s kissing, who is touching him. Doesn’t care. Except… except…

The song ends. The silence presses into Tim’s skull, static dissipating.

He pulls away from the lips against his and realises that he does not know the person kissing him, doesn’t know their name, has no neat category to file them into in his contacts. 

Breath comes to him like a drowning man and he opens his eyes.

There are plastic fingers against his back, and a smile that is painted on. Hair brushes his skin and it is stiff and artificial. The smell of formaldehyde fills his nose.

They try to lure him into another kiss, but Tim stumbles back, rests a hand on the door. The cold of it seeps into his fingers. When the music starts up again he swears it is tinged with the lilting music of a fairground, the scent of candyfloss and old popcorn mingles with sweat and cheap alcohol. 

The person… the _thing_ that he had been kissing, and god, how had he ever felt flesh and warmth from it? holds out a hand and beckons, each finger joint curling and Tim swears that he can see the strings.

He sees them all, the writhing mass of plastic and rubber and sawdust encircling the poor, blinded people he arrived with. He could join them. Let himself be swept into that dance and and dance and dance and-

The plastic hand touches his cheek, draws his attention back to the smiling creature in front of him. it leans in for another kiss, bright red lips and glass-button eyes and-

“I Know you.”

The words spill from his lips without his bidding, and fall into the air. He knows this creature, the thing that it serves. 

And Tim will not feed it.

“I Know you,” he grinds out again. The words cut through the music like splintered glass, drives the static and alcohol haze from his mind and fills him with a burning clarity, high and bright and perfect.

He Knows these things:

If he stays, he will die and the Stranger will wear his skin.

He cannot save them. 

There is always a Choice. This choice is between Victim and-

 

Timothy Stoker Chooses.

The adrenaline carries him out of the club, shoving past the grasping fleshy fingers of the bouncer and into the darkness of London. He runs until the sound of music fades and the sickly scent of death does not fill his nose.

He comes back to himself near the bank of the Thames, and he collapses against the railing, sucking in great gulping sobs of breath while the tears dry on his face. 

The adrenaline fades eventually, leaves him shivering, his limbs weak, and his jacket is no real protection from the chill of the London night, even a warm night, when his chest has been worn raw, wounds reopened. When he can still feel that artificial grip on his body and remembers the dancing.

When he is hollowed out once more with that peculiar exhaustion that comes from crying, he looks up.

The glittering circlet of the London Eye fills his vision.

Tim gives a rough laugh and scrubs a hand across his face. “So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” There is no answer, no flicker of knowledge or nudge towards it. He looks at the Eye, stares until his own water. 

He takes a breath. Makes a choice. 

“Alright then.”

He feels the Eye on him all the way home.

—————

He dreams darkly that night. 

People surrounding him and as they speak, secrets spill from their mouths in streams of black ink. Their skin is dotted with contact icons and phone numbers.

The ink spreads around Tim’s feet, an ever growing pool that stains his skin and creeps through his blood until he can see it running through him, veins gone black and coursing with information. 

It rises higher and higher, reaches his thighs and still the people keep speaking, telling him every dirty hidden thing that they contain.

He could run. He thinks he could run. Find some spot of barren land that is not stained with secrets.

He Knows that he won’t.

Tim cups his hands together and dips them into the pool of ink and stories. He raises them to his lips and drinks deeply.  
Above him, the Eye watches, unblinking and eternal.

—————

Tim does not wait for a response when he knocks on Elias’ office door the next morning. He just opens it and steps inside, and shuts it with a soft click.

“Ah, Tim,” Elias says, all smooth tones, as perfectly put together as his Saville Row suit. “I wasn’t sure we’d see you in today. Did you have a good evening?”

“You knew,” Tim says, the words coming out flat. He should be angry, he thinks, but his emotions aren’t working properly today. Feels like someone’s taken sandpaper to them, scoured them down until there’s just the memories.

“I suspected.” Elias, to his credit, does not attempt to brush it off. In his gaze, Tim sees something spark to life. He thinks it is interest, and he wonders what it would take to coax the secrets out of him and add them to his contact list under a neat little heading. 

Elias takes a breath. “You could try, Tim, but you would fail. You don’t have the power to take me on.”

“Not yet,” Tim replies and huh, he hadn’t meant to say that but it feels right. The fact that he hadn’t said that out loud phases him less than he’d expected.

It must be some kind of right answer, because Elias smiles, slow and terrible. “Not yet,” he agrees. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Why didn’t you warn me?” Tim asks, and oh, there’s the emotion. Bitterness that sticks to his teeth, and the slow kindling of anger that has simmered inside him for so long.

Elias sits back in his chair, fingers intertwining against his chest. “If I had told you, what would you have done?”

“Well, I-“ He thinks back. If Elias had even tried to speak to him yesterday for more than a few seconds, he would probably have told him to fuck off. 

“Exactly,” Elias says. “You would have ignored me, and you would probably have been killed.”

“I could have gone home,” Tim says, and for a moment he aches for the him of yesterday. The one who could have gone home and spent the evening being a maudlin drunk on his own. The one who would have dragged himself back here today and bitched at Jon and let things continue as they had been.

“Perhaps.” Elias tilts his head in agreement. “You could have done that anyway. You chose not to.”

“I chose to go to a party!” Tim snaps. 

“You did. And that choice had consequences, the same as every other choice you make.”

He grits his teeth, bites back the sharp retort that springs to his lips. He could have gone home. He could have not bothered coming into work today or any other day. He could have never come here. Could have grieved and remembered and forgotten, and got on with his life.

He had chosen not to.

“So what now?” he asks instead.

Elias blinks at him. He is reminded of seeing a tiger at London zoo, the way it had slowly blinked at people as though deciding what category they fell into. Something to respect, or something to devour.

“That depends very much on what you wanted to see me about, Tim. If it’s regarding your resignation, I’m afraid I can’t accept that. We’ve discussed this.”

No surprise there. Elias likes keeping them all on a very short leash. Jon gets more leeway, being the Archivist and all. 

It’s another choice, he realises with a jolt, an echo of that clarity he’d felt in the club. 

Something to respect. Something to devour. 

He licks his lips. For a second he swears he tastes acrid plastic. Elias is watching him with that same calm, solid expression.

Tim leans forward, hands against Elias’ desk and meets his gaze squarely. He imagines ink seeping out of Elias’ skin and the way it would taste on his lips as he drank down all of those secrets. 

“I don’t want to be a pawn anymore,” he says. His voice comes out firm, more certain than he thinks he has ever sounded. “I want you to teach me.”

It isn’t quite the right word, not for the enormity of it. Induct him into the cult sounds like something from a stupid movie. He shakes his head, and finds something more precise.

“I want you to change me.”

Elias smiles and Tim is Known.

—————

“Hey boss.”

Tim leans against the door and watch as Jon startles and drags his attention from the stack of papers he’s been sorting through. His eyes are wide and surprised. Tim has barely spoken to him for weeks, definitely hasn’t sought him out. “Tim! Uh- can I help you with something?” He frowns, gaze running over Tim’s body. “Are you alright? You look-“

“I’m fine. Long night.”

“Right. I think we’re all getting used to-“ Jon trails off, and Tim can feel the moment when his gaze shifts, when he slips on the mantle of something other. The Eye that stares out through him. 

“Oh Tim…” Jon says, and he shakes his head, and pushes himself to his feet. “Tim- what did you do?”

There is hurt in Jon’s voice, and fear, but in his eyes there is only hunger. 

Tim’s skin itches and he fights off the feeling that if he looks down at his arms he will see black running through his veins. He catches Jon’s hand when it reaches for him, and meets his eyes, meets The Eye. The Eye that Sees all and Knows all and that makes them whole.

“I made my choice.”


End file.
